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Preventing Sex Crimes

A letter in response to Rachel Aviv’s article (January 14, 2013)

As a clinical and forensic psychologist, I can assure the public that a majority of psychologists involved in risk assessment of sex offenders do not ignore the science of our field. While it is true that psychological assessment and treatment is not an exact science, and that the prediction of human behavior is a complex and difficult task, the same can be said for predicting the course of many cancers. Scientists and clinicians use clinical impressions, actuarial data, and statistics as guides, however fallible they may be. There are legal standards for the use of psychological data in courts, which are theoretically upheld during cross-examination. More important, Aviv’s article ignores the fact that the reason the compulsive viewing of child pornography is punished harshly is that it is the compulsive viewers who create the market for the images in question. Viewing child pornography is not a victimless crime. The subject of the piece is incarcerated, in part, to prevent further victimization of the sort in which he repeatedly engaged: contributing to the sexual exploitation of children. These children would not be sexually victimized with such frequency were it not for the demand for pornography.